Detection and evaluation of Çorum events in Turkish political life

With the coming to power of the Democrat Party, deviations began to be seen in the nation-state building policies carried out by the founder of the Republic, Mustafa Kemal and the republican cadre, and continued by İsmet İnönü when he assumed the National Chiefdom. With the new constitution made during the interim regime period after the May 27, 1960 Military Intervention, it was desired to put the state back on track. In order to maintain order, the military regime put provisions in the new constitution restricting the powers of the governments that use the executive power. However, with the curtailment of the executive power, socialism and leftist thought have risen. Already in the nation-state building process implemented in the single-party period, some ethnic and religious groups, whose existence was not noticed, became visible with the multi-party life, and many of these groups took part in leftist organizations in this process when the left was on the rise. Although Alevis founded a party called the Unity Party in this period, they mostly defined themselves among leftist groups. Although the leftist protests first showed themselves with the protests against the American 6th Fleet, after the students occupied the universities, they continued with the protests for the rights of the workers. During the Cold War, socialism was perceived as a threat in Turkey, as in many other countries, with the influence of the USA. For this reason, the need to prevent student and worker protests that could cause the left to become massive was felt. Instead of the governments that could not prevent the rise and actions of the left due to the restrictions in the constitution, right-wing and nationalist organizations emerged or were created to ensure this. The events, which were initially in the form of individual actions, have evolved into political violence events and then social violence events. Especially in the 1970s, when murder, assassination, anarchy, terrorism and violence increased, Alevis were also exposed to many social events in Kırıkhan, Malatya, Sivas and Kahramanmaraş. In this thesis study, the reasons that paved the way for the emergence of the Çorum Events, which was the last social event against the Alevis in the period before the 12 September 1980 Military Coup, and the process in which the events took place were discussed. The subject of the study is based on the analysis of the factors that led to the emergence of a social event in the past, what happened during the event and the results of the event. For this reason, among the materials used in the thesis study, the newspapers of the period are mostly included because they have the feature of first hand source. Apart from this, interviews with people who experienced the event, memoirs written by state officials working in the region during the events, archival documents, Parliamentary Commission Reports, journals, books, scientific theses and articles that provide information on the subject constitute the materials of the study. Qualitative research methods were used in the study because the subject covered in the thesis study does not have a clearly defined starting point and does not have unchanging rules as seen in quantitative research methods. The data of the study were obtained by the person who prepared the thesis through literature review and document review. Thus, in the prepared study, the reasons for the deviation from the nation-state policies that were tried to be formed during the Atatürk period with the transition to the multi-party system and the reasons for why the events that occurred in cities with different ethnic and religious communities in the country occurred in Çorum and its connection with other similar events were tried to be revealed.